03 Feb 2023
On This Day
3 February 2023 Cheryl

3 February 1863: Mark Twain is created

Mark Twain appears

Mark Twain’s first published work was an article called “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” It was published in 1865 and made him famous overnight. He published many other articles, stories, and books throughout his career. [1]

Samuel Langhorne Clemens used different pen names before deciding on “Mark Twain”.

From 1862 to 1865, and after a series of failures as a prospector, Clemens worked as a reporter for the Virginia City newspaper, Territorial Enterprise where his literary skills were first realised.

In a letter dated 3 February 1863 to the Territorial Enterprise from Carson City, complaining about a lavish party that kept him “awake for forty-eight hours” Clemens signed his work “yours dreamily, MARK TWAIN”, the first use of the name under which he would become famous.

The term “mark twain” is a riverboat term indicating a depth of two fathoms, which is safe for navigation. Clemens worked as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River before becoming a writer, and it is generally accepted that he chose the pen name as a nod to his past experiences, although this has been questioned by some with the suggestion that “mark twain” refers to a running bar tab at a saloon.

Mark Twain has been called “the father of American literature”. His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), with the latter often called the “Great American Novel”. He died of a heart attack on 21 April 1910.